Larry David Plays Bernie Sanders in Hilarious SNL Cold Open

Posted on October 18, 2015

He created Seinfeld and starred in Curb Your Enthusiasm. But Larry David may go down in history as one of the best political impersonators after his turn last night on Saturday Night Live. Larry played Bernie Sanders on the show's cold open which parodied the first Democratic debate hosted by CNN's Anderson Cooper.

Larry nailed his impersonation: from the Brooklyn accent to the intensity to the wild hand gestures. When he came out the crowd went wild so he waved while saying "Hello, Hello, Hello! Enough with the hellos, let’s do this!" When asked how he was he replied, "I'm good. I’m hungry, but I’m good. And now, if you don't mind, I’m going to dial this up to a 10!" Which he did.

When asked what he thinks about big banks, he replied, "Eh. Not a fan of the banks. Why do they chain all their pens? Who's trying to steal a pen from a bank?" The rest of his screed against banks revealed his ultimate plan for them: he wants break them up into little pieces and flush them down several toilets so they can never be put back together again.

Then they got to the subject of the 1% and all the billionaires who are affecting the presidential race. He said, "I don't have a Super PAC, I don’t have a backpack... I carry my stuff around loose in my arms like a professor between classes. I own one pair of underwear. That's it! Some of these billionaires, they have three, four pairs. And I don't have a dryer! I have to put my clothes on the radiator. So who do you want as president? One of these Washington insiders, or a guy who has one pair of clean underwear that he dries on a radiator?"

Larry's rants as Sanders were mesmerizing: from how easy it is to find geese to how annoying it is when he forgets his email password, they were all classics. His political team loved this line: "BernieSanders.com, check it out. It's a mess!" Of course the fact that Larry David's fortune is estimated to be close to the one billion dollar range makes it all the funnier.

Kate McKinnon was also excellent as Hillary Clinton who noted to Bernie that "it must be nice to be able to scream and curse in public." Alec Baldwin was a surprise guest who played Jim Webb, the only candidate to have killed a man (in Viet Nam). Taran Killam played Martin O’Malley), Kyle Mooney was Lincoln Chafee and Jon Rudnitsky was Anderson Cooper.

George Stephanopolos showed the real Bernie Sanders a clip of the sketch on ABC's This Week. Sanders got a kick out of it joking, "I think we'll use Larry at our next rally. He does better than I do."

This is the funniest political sketch SNL has done in years. Take a look:


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